Ghost stories live long after their subjects

Corina Curry

Friday

Oct 31, 2008 at 12:01 AMOct 31, 2008 at 4:41 PM

Emma misses her home. Sheriff Taylor still is doing his job. And the girls laughing at the Adams Arch on the campus of Rockford College are expressing decades of joyful memories. The stories of Emma, the sheriff and the girls are just part of Rockford’s rich history of hauntings, which covers most major landmarks in the city and dozens of private residences where ghosts are believed to dwell.

Emma misses her home. Sheriff Taylor still is doing his job. And the girls laughing at the Adams Arch on the campus of Rockford College are expressing decades of joyful memories.

The stories of Emma, the sheriff and the girls are just part of Rockford’s rich history of hauntings, which covers most major landmarks in the city and dozens of private residences where ghosts are believed to dwell.

Reports of strange noises and sightings of blurry images taking human form have been rampant through the years and through the city, from the Rockford Register Star News Tower and the Coronado Performing Arts Center to Greenwood Cemetery and several spots on the Rockford College campus, where spirits of the dearly departed are said to shuffle across floors in basements and attics, open and close doors, turn lights on and off, and appear and disappear in windows.

Most of the legends started with a sighting or two many years ago and evolved into what they are today — some of Rockford’s most popular, spine-tingling ghost stories.

Haunted landmarks
Mark Dorsett, a 35-year-old Rockford-based spirit communicator, says he’s seen and spoken to the man who built the Coronado Theatre, Willard Van Matre, about nine times in recent years. The Coronado was built in 1926, and Van Matre died in 1953.

Dorsett says spirits like Van Matre live among us for two reasons: their deaths were so quick that they don’t realize they’re dead, or they have a deep connection to a person or place and don’t want to leave it.

“To them, that place is as close to heaven as they need, so they stick around,” Dorsett said.
Van Matre’s ghost is always dressed to the nines, Dorsett said. “Top hat and tails. He greets people as they enter the theater’s lobby. He’s been there every time I’ve gone.”

And there are others, Dorsett said. Van Matre’s wife is there, and the theater’s first office manager, whose name he believes is Kileen.

“She’s a force of nature,” Dorsett said. “She still sees herself as a guiding force at the Coronado.”

On a recent afternoon at the Rockford Register Star, as he took a reporter and a photographer to places in the building where he’s been in contact with spirits, Dorsett suddenly laughed aloud.

“This place is like a soap opera,” he said.

“You see, there’s a woman,” he explained. “And she’s upset with the man. She’s on the seventh floor and he’s on the landing on the eighth. She’s kicked him out. She said he has a negative energy.”

The seventh floor is where the newspaper’s publisher’s office used to be, and Dorsett believes the woman is a former publisher of the paper.

“She takes credit for building this place,” he said.

Like at the Coronado, the tower is home to several spirits, Dorsett said.

“Spirits are attracted to energy. Places like schools, college campuses, theaters ... there’s so much emotion going on,” he said. “The spirit remembers that, and it is drawn back to it.”

Emma’s house
Although some buildings are said to be home to multiple ghosts, one of Rockford’s most popular ghost stories is that of a little old woman named Emma Jones, who prefers to haunt her former residence all by her lonesome.

After all, by herself in her home is how Emma wanted to be, the story goes.

Legend has it that Emma, a widow, was forced into a nursing home because she was getting too old to live alone. Some time later, she returned to the home and insisted to know why new residents were there. The couple called the nursing home to report the disturbing visit and were told that Emma had died a while ago.

Over the years and through several changes in ownership, including a handful of years as the office for a social service agency, Emma has made her presence known in the home through the sound of footsteps and occasional appearances.

The man who lives in the home today declined to talk about Emma. He said he didn’t think she was there, but plenty of others do. Her story has been written about in local history books and is featured on Web sites for ghost hunters.

Jean Lythgoe, a librarian assistant at Rockford Public Library, said the story of Emma appeals to a lot of people.

“Emma doesn’t appear to be a threatening spirit,” said Lythgoe, who was a tour guide on one of the library’s Haunted Rockford Bus Tours this month. “She’s just coming back to check on things, to make sure everyone is doing right by her house. I think a lot of people can relate to that.”

Spooky legends
Cemeteries are another hot spot for supernatural activity, and Greenwood Cemetery at the corner of Main and Auburn streets is no exception.

The presence of one man, one of the county’s first sheriffs, has been felt by several paranormal specialists upon visiting the cemetery.

The story is that of John Taylor, who was shot and killed by an Ogle County man in 1856, whom Taylor believed was trying to swindle residents in a suspicious cattle sale.

Taylor was walking the man to the county jail when he broke free from the 31-year-old sheriff and ran. The man then turned a gun on the sheriff and shot him dead. The man fled into the woods near Kent Creek and was chased by hundreds of townspeople who heard what happened. He was caught, thrown in jail and later convicted of murder. He was executed before a crowd of thousands and is said to haunt the spot where he was hung, by St. Patrick’s Church.

Some say they’ve heard the sound of cannons at night in Greenwood Cemetery, Lythgoe said.

“I think that sounds neat,” she said. “There’s at least one veteran of the Revolutionary War buried there, and lots from the Civil War.”

The haunting at the Adams Arch is a called a residual haunting, said Kathi Kresol, a librarian assistant who organizes the annual Haunted Rockford tours. People say they can hear the sound of girls laughing as they walk past the arch at night.

“That piece of the college’s history goes way, way back. It’s one of the oldest things out there,” Kresol said. “What I’ve been told is, the laughter isn’t one girl or a group of particular girls. It represents all of the girls. It’s holding their happy memories of being at college at a time when not a lot of girls went to college. The girls loved being there.”

Corina Curry can be reached at ccurry@rrstar.com or (815) 987-1395.

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